Jack of Spades
by RainbowBetty
Summary: Sam is in Hell, Dean knows this. He just can't stop hearing Sam's voice and seeing him everywhere he looks. But when something threatens Ben, it sends Dean's protective instincts into overdrive. Could the very thing that threatens Ben be the key to bringing back Sam – and is that a choice Dean is prepared to make? NOW COMPLETE! Set a few weeks after 5.22 Swan Song
1. Chapter 1

**Jack of Spades**

**Part 1**

Dean closed his eyes against a wave of hopelessness that swept over him, threatening to bring him to his knees as Lucifer's words echoed in his head: _I know you have the rings, Sam._

Beside him, his brother stiffened and stammered as he scrambled for a new lie. "I—I have no idea—what you're talking about."

It was a poor bluff, the poorest, they both knew it. But they were out of cards. This was it, then. This was how they would die. Wiped off the earth with an inconsequential wave of Satan's hand, a mere dismissal, the swatting of a fly. Dean looked at Sam, his brother breathing heavily but his face set. Sam's eyes were locked on Lucifer.

"So he knows," said Sam under his breath to Dean, with all his resolve conveyed in a harsh whisper. "Doesn't change anything."

The raw desperation in Sam's voice stabbed Dean through the heart.

"Sam."

"We don't have any other choice!"

He couldn't. _They couldn't._ He couldn't let this happen, couldn't let Sam do this. His world was slipping away. Sam. _No._

"_No." _

His brother looked up and met Lucifer's eyes resolutely. "YES."

* * *

He was slipping. Slipping. But he held on, clutching hard to the sleeve of this brother's jacket like a lifeline, the feeling draining from his fingertips along with his awareness. He was not letting go. He was not leaving Sammy alone, not like this. Would not let him die alone.

"Sam, it's okay." He gasped through broken lips. "It's okay, I'm here. I'm not gonna leave you. _I'm not gonna leave you."  
_

His vision narrowed to a pinprick, and he clawed his way back through the dark that was pulling him down. He fought it back and through the swimming blackness and saw his brother's fist raising above him. _Not your fault, Sam. Don't you dare think this is your fault._ He couldn't form the words. Couldn't reach his brother, couldn't save him. He begged Sam to see it in his eyes. Could only watch as Sam wrested back control from Lucifer and saved his life.

Saved this whole damned world and let go of himself.

* * *

The dark kitchen was quiet but for the hum of the refrigerator and a soft whir as the air conditioning kicked on. Dean closed his eyes and pressed his fingers into his eyelids, wishing he could shut the noise of the past out of his head.

He hadn't bothered to turn on the light. Remotely, numbly, he grasped the neck of the whiskey bottle and tipped it against the glass, feeling liquid spill across the fingers holding the glass by its rim. He shook them off with disinterest and downed the shot.

The warmth couldn't reach him. He was stone inside and out, dead and cold.

Not quite as cold as hell.

He angrily pushed the unbidden thought down along with his surging feelings. What right did he have to feel anything? What was Sam feeling right now?

A flash of his own hell caught him off guard, as it often did, ripping the air from his lungs and seizing his chest in an iron grip of terror and dread.

It was always worst at night. When there was no soft sound of Sam's heavy breathing in the hotel bed next to his to keep him grounded.

"Hey." The soft voice behind him brought him back to the suburban kitchen. Lisa.

Dean shook himself, quickly burying the grief, the hopelessness, as he half-turned to face her and pasted on a half grin that he hoped was reassuring. "Hey," he replied neutrally.

"You okay?" she asked gently, pulling out a chair at the table to sit beside him. She had her robe pulled close around herself, sleepiness clouding her features but genuine caring in her eyes. She didn't wait for an answer. Her gaze fell on the half-drained bottle. She put her hand over Dean's hand still gripping it by the neck, and pried his fingers away, closing them into her own and holding his hand limply against the laminate of the kitchen table. Dean's hand shook. Lisa noticed.

When he met her eyes, her sad smile spoke volumes. It drove a new spike into the dead place inside Dean.

"Didn't wake you up, did I?" Dean asked, subtly shifting the attention away from himself and giving the hand that held his a gentle squeeze.

"Can't help but notice you spending more time down here with her –" Lisa nodded at the bottle between them – "than with me. So do you want to talk about it?"

"Nah," said Dean reflexively. "I'm good." He knew his voice sounded hollow.

"Yeah, if you say so," Lisa countered with kind lightheartedness. "But it's my duty to inform you that I'm seeing a pattern here, tiger. Torturing yourself isn't going to bring Sam back."

Dean flinched at the word _torture_,and Lisa saw it. _Shit,_ he cursed at himself, and that caused his careful mask to slip further.

"_Dean,"_ she said earnestly, pulling his hand toward her and leaning in close. "I know there's no normal for this, what you're going through. You're allowed to feel whatever you feel right now. It's going to take time. I just…"

She ran out of words, and they sat in silence for a long moment. As it stretched between them, Dean's mind brought up image after image of his brother's head thrown back in a silent scream, Sam's face twisted in pain, Sam's hands coming up over his head to ward off unimaginable horror, Sam's arms pinned back by unseen forces to prevent him from protecting himself. His kid brother, his Sammy, the single most important person Dean cared most about in the world, being ripped apart and broken to pieces by a dispassionate evil that was beyond human understanding.

Desperate to break the silence and the barrage of images, Dean cleared his throat. He picked up the shot glass and pointed it toward the beautiful woman who had somehow been dumb enough to take him in, to continue putting up with his shit, and he did his best imitation of a reassuring smile. _"You_don't need to worry about me. I'm fine. Really."

"Right, because taking your liver for a swim every night is what _fine_ people do. Okay," she sighed. "Look. The least I can do is keep you company. I'm not gonna leave you alone down here."

_I'm not gonna leave you._

At the look on Dean's face, Lisa's crooked smile faded.

Dean visibly struggled for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was unsteady. "Lisa, if you really want to do something for me, then please. Get some sleep, okay? For both of us."

Lisa gave Dean's hand one last squeeze and then slid sideways out of her chair to stand up from the table. Just before turning to head back upstairs, she paused and said, "You can talk about it, you know. It's okay."

Dean drew in a breath, effectively pulling himself together. He looked up at Lisa and raised his eyebrows. "Yeah. Yeah, sure. I get it." He tried to smile. "Thanks," he added.

"Oh hey, one more thing," she said. "Ben's little league team starts practice this week and he's been asking if you still want to take him out and play catch. Apparently he's worried that he throws like a girl."

This drew the first genuine grin from Dean. "You bet. We'll work the sissy right outta that arm."

* * *

He saw Sam everywhere.

At the parts store, at the diner, even out of the corner of his eye when he was sitting home alone in the living room watching mindless TV. And each time he realized it wasn't Sam, it was like a brutal kick in the stomach. It was a constant reminder of the fact that he would never again catch a glimpse of Sam and have it really _be_ Sam standing there.

Digging through a cardboard box he kept in the garage, Dean busily pushed aside the _Sam_ things he couldn't bring himself to part with and could barely stand to touch because of the sharp current of pain that flooded through him when he did. Sam's jacket. His flannel shirt. Notebooks, gnawed pen caps. His laptop. Dean's fingers unintentionally brushed the cool, smooth edge of it, and he bit the inside of his cheek hard as a flood of _Sam_ memories washed over him. He forcefully pushed the feelings back down.

At last, he found what he'd been looking for. His old baseball mitt, worn and aged with the word _Dean_ printed along the edge in deliberate, childish letters with faded permanent marker. He still marveled at the fact that Bobby had kept it all these years, although he had tried to turn it down when Bobby shoved it at him along with some other pieces of his haphazard childhood.

"Just take it, ya moron," Bobby had muttered. "It doesn't hurt to hold on to a thing or two from your past. You _did_ have a past, much as you like to pretend ya didn't."

Dean had to admit, he liked the stir of warmth that the mitt evoked when he brought it close to his face and breathed in the soft, faded leather. He saw himself with Bobby, ditching his training to toss the ball around in the park until shadows stretched around them through the uneven blades of grass. He felt the curve of the ball in his ten-year-old fingers, the way he hooked his arm to hurl it directly into Bobby's waiting glove. The satisfying _thwack_ of his throw landing square where he'd intended.

He wanted Ben to know that feeling.

Not the crippling guilt that came afterward when he'd heard his dad shouting at Bobby about wasted time and dulled hunting skills. _…get his brother killed one day,_ he'd heard his dad shout angrily. Bobby had raised his voice in response, _… ten year old kid!... put that on him…_ Dean had shoved his fingers in his ears to block it out, silently siding with his father against himself and Bobby, kicking himself for letting himself get talked into an afternoon of fun if it meant failing his dad… or losing his brother.

Dean swallowed hard and hurriedly shoved his few possessions back into the cardboard box, pushing it back against the wall on the metal storage shelf.

* * *

Ben punched his fist into the recess of Dean's glove on his other hand, testing its fit and its give. "This is sweet," he said. "How did you get it so soft like this? My glove is way too stiff."

"You just need to break it in," Dean offered, reaching out to trade Ben for his own glove. He wiggled his calloused, adult-sized fingers into the grooves his much younger self had carved out. It was tight, the bottom of the glove riding up to the middle of his palm, but he'd be able to get by for a game or two of catch. "You oil it up, let it soak its way in, and then keep working it till it's how you like it. Your glove is like your car, kid," Dean went on, enjoying the flow of man-wisdom that he seemed to be channeling from his own father through him to this boy who reminded him so much of himself. "You love it, you take care of it with everything you've got, and it'll always be there for you."

"_Just like a brother."_

Dean spun around sharply, certain he'd heard a voice he couldn't have heard. There was no one there, just a handful of kids and parents milling around the playground. He swung back to Ben. "What did you say?" he demanded.

Ben was looking at him strangely. "I didn't say anything. What? Did you hear something?"

"You didn't hear that?"

Ben shook his head. He looked bemused, like he was enjoying Dean's comedy act. "What?"

"I was sure I…" He frowned, pressing his fist into the small glove and driving his fingers farther into the grooves. "Nothing. Forget it, never mind."

_Stupid. Thinking you see Sam, now hearing him. Get it together, man._

Dean reached down and grasped the ball he'd brought with them and held it up to Ben. "You know your way around one of these?"

Ben took it and trotted off a good distance from Dean, grinning broadly. He pulled his arm back, bringing his throwing hand up to his shoulder and then catapulting an overhand throw back at Dean. Dean suppressed a smile and started calculating how many games of catch it would take to teach the kid to throw properly.

Then, Dean's stomach twisted into a knot, because _he heard it,_ clear as anything, and he recognized the voice behind it because it was a voice he knew better than his own.

"Dean."

The ball slipped out of Dean's glove, dropping and bouncing twice on the ground beside him.

"Ben, we have to go," Dean said, low and rushed, heading in the direction of Ben and scooping him in under his arm as he strode toward the car. He never looked back toward the source of the voice, he just moved. He needed to get out of there. Ben's protests were loud and justified, but Dean couldn't. He just couldn't.

* * *

The drive home was silent and tense. Dean didn't blame Ben for being pissed. He drove in silence, embarrassed by his obvious overreaction and trying to reason with the part of himself that had _heard_ Sam. It wasn't his imagination. But it had to be. He wondered what stage of grief auditory hallucinations fell into. Whatever, it wasn't like he was about to start reading self-help books and holding hands in a trust circle.

"Did you know that guy?" Ben asked suddenly.

Dean felt the color drain from his face. He turned a sharp glance toward Ben. _"What?"_

"That guy back there, the one who said your name. Did you know him? He looked familiar."

Dean slammed on the brakes and swerved the Impala over to the shoulder. His hands were clenched on the wheel. He tried to keep his voice level. "What… did he look like?"

Ben shrugged. "Tall. Long hair."

Gravel on the side of the road skittered away under Baby's tires as Dean hit the gas hard and yanked the wheel into a u-turn.

"You're sure," Dean pressed, urging the pedal down to the floor. His heart was beating a thousand miles a minute, and his stomach felt like it was trying to climb out of his throat.

_What if it wasn't impossible? _And then: _Don't be stupid. It's not Sam. Sam is gone._

But: _Cas had brought_ him _back. __What if, somehow…_

_What if it was _possible?

"Yeah. Course I'm sure," Ben said. "He was right behind you." Dean noticed Ben's tight grip on the door handle and the way he was anxiously staring straight ahead at the windshield as the neighborhoods blew past. Dean consciously eased up on the gas at bit.

_What if…?_

They hung around the park until well past dinner, Dean on high alert looking for any trace of anything that might scream _Sam_ to him. Of course, there was nothing. No sign of Sam. _Not ever again. You know where Sam is. There's no coming back from that._

When he finally called Ben over to head home, the sun was setting and Dean knew Lisa was wondering where they were. He absently pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and flipped it open in the act of dialing home. He glanced down at the screen.

One missed call: S.

Dean's entire universe tunneled in on the phone in his hand. He stared at it blankly.

_Wake up, dumbass. This is a dream._

Only, he was pretty sure it wasn't. And for a brief moment, he let himself entertain the idea. A strange warmth coursed through him at the idea of seeing Sam again, seeing the gleam of a smile in his eyes, grabbing him by the arms and pulling him close. Oh God, he wanted his brother back so bad.

Slowly, deliberately, he pressed "return call" and brought the phone to his ear. It rang once, then went to voicemail. Sam's voicemail.

"_Hey, this is Sam. Leave me a message."_

God. Oh God. Sam's voice, _Sam,_ safe and familiar, and alive. He could close his eyes and imagine that Sam was just across town, back at their hotel or researching something at the library. The familiar, grief-driven kick in the stomach turned violent, and Dean nearly doubled over. This was why he had never called Sam's voicemail or listened to any of the saved messages he had of Sam's. He never wanted to feel _this._

He clicked over to his own voicemail. No new messages. _No shit._ Someone was fucking with him, and this wasn't fucking funny. The reality of it closed in on him, the cold, hard emptiness of loss that threatened to swallow him, and he very nearly couldn't push it all down again.

"Fuck this," he said to no one.

"Dean?" It was Ben. His face was drawn into a look of concern. "You okay?"

Dean exhaled and pressed the number one. Lisa. "Yeah, buddy. Just fine. Let's get you home."

* * *

_To be continued._


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**

Ben had been with him when Dean saw the '69 Camero sitting in sad disrepair on the car lot downtown. He slapped Ben's knee with the back of his hand and pointed. "That's your car!" he said to the kid.

Ben laughed. "Are you kidding me? _That?"_

It was a game they played. Dean would point out a car that caught his eye and exclaim to Ben in mock outrage, "What the hell, man! Did you tell him he could take your ride?" Ben would laugh, and that gaping, brother-sized hole inside of Dean would ache just a tiny bit less.

This time, Dean slowed and pulled into the lot. He raised his eyebrows at Ben questioningly: _You ready to check this out?_

Ben looked at him like he was nuts, but he grinned and quickly grasped the door handle and hopped out.

"Oh man!" Dean gushed as he walked in a slow circle around the aging Camero. "Do you realize how great this baby could be?"

Ben shook his head skeptically. "Um. This thing is a heap."

"Don't call her that!" Dean put his hands protectively on her hood. "A little love, a little bit of fixing up, that's all it would take. She'd be beautiful. I'm telling you!"

Dean was suddenly felt a prickle of awareness on the back of his neck, as if someone behind them was watching him. Just to his left, he heard, "I think you should buy it."

It was Sam. _No It fucking isn't Sam. It will never be Sam._ In his mind's eye, he saw himself turning around to see Sam, standing there beside him, hands in his jacket pockets, smiling.

"_Hi, Dean," Sam would say._

_No_. Dean clamped down hard on the upswell of emotion. A muscle twitched along the side of his clenched his jaw. _It isn't real. _

"Dean?" It was Ben. Dean glanced up at him and saw Ben sway unsteadily. He was sweating, and his face looked a few shades too pale.

"Ben? Hey! You all right?"

Ben wrapped an arm protectively around his middle. Dean put a hand on Ben's arm but he waved it off. Color was slowly filtering back into Ben's cheeks, making him look flushed. "Yeah, fine," he said. "Just a… a cramp or something."

Dean eyed him closely. "You sure? We should probably –"

"Whatever, man. What am I, your sister?" Ben really did remind Dean of himself sometimes. "So, what do you think? Are you saying this piece of crap could _be_ something?"

Ben sounded a little breathless, but Dean decided to let it go. He remembered times at that age when he would have rather died than admit he wasn't _fine_ when his dad asked. So he turned his attention back to the car. It beckoned to him like a shiny new toy, something he'd be able to _do_ something with, _make_ something out of. Refocus whatever nervous energy was messing with his head. He ran his hands over the curve of the hood, mentally cataloguing all her rust spots and dings. Oh yes, he needed this.

"Only one way to find out," he said. "We've gotta get under this lady's skirt." Ben gave a wide, lascivious grin, and Dean pointed at him with mock seriousness and warned, _"Do not _repeat that to your mother."

* * *

Having a project to come home to at the end of the day was like breathing. For a couple of weeks, it almost made him happy.

He brought out a step stool to the garage so Ben could stand next to him and lean with him under the hood and peer into the engine. He handed Dean the tools he asked for and seemed to absorb Dean's knowledge of motors like a sponge.

Dean caught Lisa watching them from a distance one night as Dean was explaining to Ben how to change a spark plug. She was smiling. Dean couldn't help smiling back.

As he did, he felt a twinge. This was the so-called normal life Sam had wanted. Apple pie, white picket fence, the whole deal. The wife, the kid, the suburban house. The nine-to-five job. (Well – Dean couldn't quite call what he did _that_, but his gig with the build crew was steady and he was good at it.) And yet, he would have traded it all in an instant to have Sam back, to be pulling into a shitty motel at the end of a hunt, refolding maps and bitching about some grave they had to dig up.

This was _Sam's_ happily ever after, not his. Dean was a hunter. Sam was a suburbanite. How could he ever be okay with the way things had gone down? It was the universe's way of shoving a gigantic middle finger at him. _You're alive. You're happy. And your brother, the one who saved your ass and this whole big, beautiful, ungrateful world you're living in, for that he's burning in Hell._

Lisa and Ben went to church. Dean didn't. The thought of praying made him want to simultaneously laugh and throw up.

But Dean never missed one of Ben's games.

* * *

"Aw, _the hell_ he was out!" Dean hollered, leaping to his feet on the shaky park bleachers. Lisa, seated beside him, held up her hands to her mouth and booed. Dean dropped back down heavily beside her and she smacked him good-naturedly on the side of his leg, a warning to take it easy before he got them both in trouble.

Dean ignored her. He called out to Ben loudly, making sure the umpire heard him, "Hey! It's okay, Ben! You were totally safe, everybody over here knows it!"

Ben caught Dean's eye and nodded his appreciation, walking back to his team's bench. And then his ankles seemed to fold in on themselves and Ben's eyes rolled back into his head. He pitched forward, coming down hard on his knees and then simply folding like paper.

Dean heard the shriek from Lisa and felt her shoving forward toward Ben before his own yell even left his mouth. "BEN?" He sprinted the length of the grassy field and dropped to his knees beside Ben just an instant behind Lisa. He immediately found himself in rescue mode – pulse, check. Breathing, check. Ben's coach and the umpire were right behind them, also kneeling. Dean glanced up and held up his hands at the crowd of observers to keep them from pushing in. "He's okay. Let's give him some room, all right?" He pointed to one of the fathers who was pulling out his cell. "You got 911?" he asked.

The man was nodding and dialing, and several other parents were pulling out their phones as well.

Ben's eyes fluttered and he reached out a hand. "Mom?" he gasped. "Did you—"

Lisa grabbed his hand and held it to her chest. "Hey, bud! You're okay. You're fine!" Dean recognized that tone in her voice. It was his _please-Sam-you-have-to-be-okay_ voice.

"Ambulance is on the way," someone announced.

Dean put his hand on Lisa's back. "Heat, probably," he said, hoping he sounded confident and reassuring. "I'll get him some water."

"Dean! Did you-" Ben moved to sit up, and his coach put a hand down on his chest telling him to keep still.

"Hang tight, buddy. I'll be right back!" Dean jogged back across the field to the team bench where he'd noticed the coach was keeping a cooler with bottles of water for the kids. Reaching into the ice to pull out several bottles, an uneasy feeling gripped him. He hesitated, frowning, trying to place it, then he shook it off and slammed the lid of the cooler back down. As he stood up, his gaze crossed the park, back toward the lot of parked cars. There was a lone figure standing there.

Even at that distance, Dean recognized him.

Sam raised one arm stiffly, in greeting.

Dean froze. He breath died in his chest. His hand tightened convulsively on the two slippery bottled of water. He shook his head. Blinked. It was still Sam.

Behind him, there was a commotion and Dean heard someone shout, "Hold him! Hold his head!" Dean dropped the water. He ran. He pushed his way through the throng of parents to see Ben convulsing, his head thrown back and his jaw clenched.

* * *

The EMTs rolled the stretcher, carrying Ben, up to the waiting doors of the ambulance. Dean patted the kid's knee and cocked a finger at him. "I'll follow you and your mom, meet you there," he promised. "Easy on those nurses!" Ben, looking drained and tired, still rewarded Dean with a smile and cocked a finger back.

Lisa grasped Dean's hand at her side, squeezed once, and then released it, moving to climb into the back of the ambulance after the stretcher. "See you there?" she said to Dean.

Dean nodded and helped her step up over the threshhold. The back doors swung closed, and Dean stepped back, shoving his hand into his pocket and closing his fist around his set of keys. The ambulance flicked on its sirens and pulled away, taking Ben and Lisa with it.

The image of Sam replayed itself in his memory. He turned it over, on its side, upside down. He couldn't find a single hole, unless he was well and truly nuts, seeing things that weren't there. It was Sam. He _knew_ Sam. Not only had it looked like Sam, it had _felt_ like Sam. Even at such a distance, Dean had locked on Sam's eyes and felt the flare of recognition in his chest at the sight of his brother.

Trouble was, he couldn't afford that kind of break with reality right now. Not when he needed to be the one holding it together.

* * *

"Ben Braeden, he was brought in this afternoon," Dean said to the receiving nurse. He leaned forward urgently with his hand resting on the cool, smooth, white surface of the kiosk.

As she typed the information, Dean's gaze drifted absentmindedly down from the tips of her loose blonde curls to the gentle curve of a breast just barely visible through a buttoned gap in her blouse. The nurse didn't notice. Her eyes never left her computer screen. "He's still with the doctor," she said. "Are you Dad?"

"I—no," Dean said. "Family friend."

"Just have a seat, sir, and we'll let you know when there's any information."

Dean shifted his weight and paced a few times, then pulled out his phone and texted Lisa: "I'm here. Waiting room."

Lisa's text came back a moment later: "Rm. 203"

Ben's face lit up when Dean knocked once and then pushed open the door. "I saw," he said, gesturing with his hands, _"the_ hottest nurse."

"Scale of one to ten?" Dean asked.

"At least a twelve."

"Nice." He caught Lisa's bemused look and backpedaled. "Oh, not that I—or you—_Ben,"_ he admonished sternly. He came over and put a hand on Ben's forehead. "What's with the fainting, huh?"

"I _didn't faint._ Girls faint."

"They're still running all sorts of tests," Lisa said. Her voice was steady and calm and _so Lisa,_ but Dean saw the lines that had deepened under her eyes, the way her lips pulled just a little too tight at the corners.

He pulled over a chair and sat down next to her, near Ben's bed. "Well. The heat really sucked out there. And you had all your gear on. That can really mess with a guy."

"Dean?" Ben said, frowning slightly.

Dean leaned forward on his elbows. "Yeah."

Ben glanced at his mom, then said, "Can I… talk to you, just for a sec? Mom, is it okay if I just talk to Dean about something?"

Lisa's eyebrows shot up, and she looked at Dean questioningly. He made a _beats me_ face, and said, "Uh, sure bud."

As the door closed behind Lisa, Ben frowned again. "Okay, so… Dean? I keep getting this weird feeling."

Dean said, "Wait, is this like one of those _weird feelings_ they tell you about in health class? Because I'm here for ya, kid, I am. But I'm gonna tell you right now—"

"No, jackass. Listen. I was… remember that day we bought the Camero, and I said I didn't feel good?"

Dean nodded. He didn't like where this was going. He didn't like the nagging feeling he was having about the two events.

"It wasn't a cramp. I don't know what it was. It felt weird. Like there was… like there was something _pulling_ out of me."

It didn't sound medical. It sounded vaguely supernatural, which made Dean like it even less. "And are you telling me you felt the same way today?"

Ben nodded. "Yeah. Only… more. Like it was pulling harder. Or stronger."

Dean felt a surge of protectiveness. Ben might not be his, but he was _his._ "And _why_ didn't you want your mom to know this?"

"I told her about it. That first day. Only, she thinks the pulling thing is like appendicitis or something, that's what she told the doctor. But I… Dean, I…" he leaned closer to Dean and said, almost under his breath, "I can tell. There's _something_ doing it. _Something."_ The way he said it loaded all kinds of significance into that last word, and Dean _wished_ he could just dismiss it as the kid's imagination.

But of course, he couldn't. No more than he would have dismissed Sammy's insistence that there was a monster in the closet. Nine times out of ten, there really was.

* * *

Dean stepped out the back door of their house, careful not to disturb the line of salt he was stepping over, and quietly pulled the door closed.

The humid, midsummer air swelled around him and the high-pitched hum of cicadas rose and fell as he his beer down on the ground beside him, wiping condensation off his hand on the side of his jeans and slipping his phone out of his back pocket.

Ever since they'd brought Ben home, he'd been thinking about calling Bobby.

_And to tell him what, exactly? _Dean argued with himself. _That Ben is being haunted by some monster that's trying to suck out his insides? That you're so batshit insane you think your dead brother is showing up to little league games? _He shoved the aside the uncomfortable feeling that the hallucinations weren't a coincidence.

He wished he could talk to Sam about it.

He hesitated, lingering for a moment on the precipice of that wide expanse of emptiness and loss before consciously stepping back from it, digging into his contacts for Bobby's number and hitting _call._ It was Ben he was worried about, not his own tentative grip on reality. He didn't like the" weird feeling" that Ben's "weird feeling" was dredging up in him. It felt too familiar. Like something he should be hunting.

Only, he didn't do that anymore. He hid. Behind lines of salt and sigils and the holy water Lisa didn't know he kept next to the gun under the bed.

The phone rang only once before he heard Bobby's voice. _"Dean._ You all right?"

Because, _of course,_ the only reason he would call Bobby was if he were in trouble. If it hadn't been so true, it would have stung a bit. "Hey, Bobby. No, no, everything's fine." He hesitated a second. Then he said, "Actually, I don't know if it is."

"Well?"

Suddenly, he felt a million miles away from everything he knew. All the times he had called Bobby for advice on a hunt, just picked up the phone and without so much as a _hello_ had launched into a laundry list of what info they needed, what spells, what charms, what demon-killing, death-eating, monster-smashing, ghost-busting piece of lore that would keep him and Sam alive for one more day.

"Bobby." He ran a hand over his eyes. "How… how are you?"

"What the hell, boy? You got something to say to me or not? Otherwise, I'm gonna have to hang up now, I think I left _Oprah_ on in the next room."

Dean chuckled. "Okay, fine. Bobby, I think I need your help."

"Yeah, I thought you might. Idjit."

* * *

_To be continued._


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3**

"So I am crazy."

"Not even close. But you go ahead and think that if it makes you feel better." Bobby uncapped the bottle of Hunter's Helper and set it down between them on his desk, reaching into a drawer to pull out two glasses. He handed one to Dean.

"It doesn't," Dean answered flatly.

They drank in silence for a few minutes, each one mulling over the events Dean had just laid out for Bobby, ending with Ben's seizure and the fact that he still didn't seem to be snapping back. Dean had left out Lisa's emotional breakdown last night after they'd put Ben to bed. And the fact that Dean himself felt like a piece of rope frayed down to its last few strands.

"Well, I have a theory. You want to hear it?" asked Bobby.

"Am I going to like it?"

"Doubt it."

Dean pressed his lips together. "What is it?"

In answer, Bobby stood up and walked over to one of the many stacks of books that were piled randomly around his living space.

"One-eyed Jacks, and the man with the axe," Bobby said, half to himself, the rhyme coming together in a satisfying, sing-song rhythm as he picked through books, looking for the right one.

_Eight-year-old Dean reached out and gathered the face-down cards into a pile and slid them toward himself. He was keenly aware of his little brother's wide eyes on him, Sammy with his feet tucked underneath him kneeling on the kitchen chair pulled up close to Dean. Across the table, Bobby picked up the hand he'd dealt himself, fanning them with expert ease. "Deuces, jacks, and the man with the axe – those are your wild cards. Got it?" Dean nodded, all seriousness, clumsily shifting his cards in his hands as he looked for pairs._

Bobby thumped an open book down onto his desk in front of Dean, jolting him out of the memory. "There you go," he said.

"Poker?" Dean asked wryly.

"_Lore,"_ Bobby said, pointing at an aged, pen-and-ink illustration of a sinister-looking nobleman holding a short dagger in each hand. "The jack… or as he used to be called, the knave. The image started popping up on playing cards a few centuries back. There's some significance around the fact that certain jacks are pictured differently from the others. _The one eye,"_ he clarified, looking at Dean to be sure he understood, and Dean nodded. He knew that two of the four jacks were usually shown turned to the side, only one eye visible in profile. One-eyed jacks.

"There's some lore on the subject, apparently they either represent a sort of protective spirit summoned to ward off death… or something a whole lot nastier."

"Protective. So that's good?"

"Depends on who's holding the leash, I'm guessing."

Bobby flipped a few pages, and the drawings turned darker. The knave appeared amid swirling images of flames, demons, and disembodied souls whose mouths were frozen open in silent screams. And blood. Lots of blood.

"That look a little too familiar to you?" Bobby asked, eyeing Dean with a knowing gentleness that said, _I know what you're carrying around with you. Don't pretend I don't know._

Dean made a face. "A bit, yeah." Stylized and sanitized, but somehow oddly accurate.

Bobby went on. "Lots of cryptic stuff here, some French and Danish history, a couple of legends. Here's the part that stands out to me, though." He thumbed a few more pages and turned the book so it was facing Dean right side up. The illustration was another depiction of Hell, but floating above all the chaos was the knave, reaching one long, overly spindly and snake-like arm into the Hell swarming below. Swirls and flames seemed to be writhing up around his arm, traveling up from Hell, and encircling the knave with what looked like a kind of Hellfire force field.

Dean wrestled with impatience. "You want to tell me what it is I'm looking at?"

Bobby drew a finger around the knave, tracing the lines of the force field. "All of this power it's drawing on? I bet you can guess how it's charging its batteries."

"Hell?"

"Bingo. This thing feeds on eternal torment. The kind you'd find served up on a blue plate in the darkest corners of Hell. It survives by latching onto something especially nasty that's happening down below. Like poking a straw into a juice box."

"The thing runs on Hell juice? Like a… a Hell parasite?"

"Well, yeah. If it barks like a duck."

Dean drew a frustrated breath. "Man, I am really not following you. Where exactly is Ben in all this?"

Bobby looked reluctant to have to spell it out. "You might want to be asking where is _Sam."_

"What are you talking about?"

"Dean, I don't know a nicer way to say this. We know Sam closed the door to the cage behind him. And we both know that meant he was basically closing himself up with two of the meanest and _angriest_ sons of bitches in all existence. Now if you're the kind of creature that goes around sniffing out torment…"

Dean said nothing. Bobby could see the muscle in his jaw working. "Dean?" he continued. "It's _possible_ that this thing has just stumbled on the biggest all-you-can-eat buffet of its life."

When Dean spoke, his voice sounded forced. "What about Ben?"

"Ben, well... He's the straw."

"What does that mean?"

"The more it feeds off whatever's happening down below, the worse it is for Ben. Whatever Sam's—" he cut off, seeing the look on Dean's face. "That much psychic turmoil or whatever you want to call it, being channeled through one person – one _kid_—Dean, he's not going to last."

Dean inhaled and leaned all his weight onto his arms on the desk in front of him. "Okay, so tell me how we stop it."

Bobby looked lost. "I…" He held his hands up. "Guess I'll make some calls."

"To hell with calls. We need to _fucking stop it. Now."_

"Dean…"

Dean grasped the book off the desk and hurled it against the wall, scattering piles of papers and knocking the bottle of whiskey to the floor. He stormed past Bobby out the back door, slamming it shut with enough force to shake the frame of the house.

* * *

Dean drove. He let the night come down around him, the Impala's headlights piercing a thin stream of visibility as mileage piled on, heading nowhere.

He reached over and turned up the volume so that guitar and vocals shrieked into his skull, bass thumping through his chest like a current.

_It's killing Ben._

The music refused to drown out the words playing over and over in his head, beating him down.

_That much psychic turmoil or whatever you want to call it…_

Psychic tumoil. Bobby might as well have called it what it was.

_Sam…_

Sam trapped in the cage at the hands of Lucifer and Michael, in so much pain, terror, desperation that it caught the notice of some hungry, sick, pain-sucking beast. Dean couldn't take it. His brother, in that place. No escape. No way to end it.

No way to protect him. No way to protect Ben.

_He's not going to last._

Ben was dying. Sam was suffering.

_All that psychic turmoil…_

Dean gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. He heard himself screaming, his throat going raw with rage and helplessness.

He almost didn't see the thing in the middle of the road.

He slammed hard on the brakes at the last second, wrestling with the wheel to keep the car from spinning out. His tires squealed, leaving long, angry swatches of black rubber on the pavement behind him. Ahead of him, hands hit the hood of the Impala – close, too close. The adrenaline haze brought his senses into sharp focus. Dean yanked the door open and lunged out, hurling himself toward the man he'd nearly run down.

Dean pulled up short. The figure was leaning heavily against the car, his arm wrapped tightly around his midsection. Pale. Shaking. Doubled over in evident pain.

_Sam._

Dean's mouth fell open. "Wha… _Sammy?"_

Sam looked up and met his eyes, and they were _Sam's_ eyes, so filled with indescribable horror that it physically hurt Dean to see it. "D-Dean. I-I…"

Dean couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. _This isn't real. Don't do this,_ he told himself at the same time that he found himself reaching out, pulling this Sam to him, completely on instinct, wrapping both arms around him. He clenched Sam's shirt in both hands, holding him hard. He was solid, _real._

"You're not here," he choked, wanting to be wrong. "This isn't _you. Sam._ How can this…?"

Sam was shaking, Dean could feel him literally trembling, and somehow Dean knew it wasn't because of the chill night air. There was something about him that seemed too fragile. Not quite whole. But this wasn't his imagination, or an echo, or a spirit, _this was his brother._

Finally, he pulled back to look at his brother who should not be there.

Sam clutched on to Dean's forearms like a lifeline.

"Dean… I need to…" Sam started. Then Sam's knees gave out, and Dean caught the full weight of his brother as he sagged against him and he eased Sam back so that he was supported against the hood of the Impala.

"Sam! Sam, it's okay. I've got you." _This isn't real. Thisisn'trealthisisn'trealthisisn'treal._

"_Ben,"_ Sam gasped. "Dean, I'm sorry! You-"

Before Dean could respond, Sam cried out sharply, and his head jerked to the side, his hands reflexively jerking up as if to protect himself. Then he doubled over, face contorting, and he seemed to _flicker_, like frames of a film spliced too close together. _"Dean…"_ His voice sounded like thin, weak, like part of it was missing.

"_SAM?"_

Dean clutched Sam's shoulders, and his hands closed on nothing. He overbalanced and fell against the car in the empty space that Sam had been. He heard what sounded like a distant echo of a terrible, drawn-out shriek in a voice that he knew was Sam's, except that he never in his life wanted to imagine what could cause his brother to make that sound.

Dean put his hand on the car where Sam had been. Oh God, Sam.

Dean swallowed back bile, his heart racing. His eyes weren't seeing right. He fumbled for his phone, quickly pulling it from his pocket with hands that were shaking hard.

Just as he did, the phone lit up with a call from Lisa.

"Lisa?"

"Dean!" she cried, her voice close to hysterics. "Dean, where are you? It's Ben."

* * *

The harsh light of morning was filtering through the white hospital blinds in the window of Ben's room. Dean opened his eyes to the soft _beep-beep_ of monitoring equipment and saw Lisa in the chair beside Ben's bed, her dark hair splayed over an arm that she had draped over Ben's still form.

Ben was pale and still, _asleep,_ Dean hoped. The oxygen tube below his nose and the IV in his hand made him look frail and too small amid all the machinery, and Dean had to fight down an overwhelming urge to gather him up and shield him from the _thing_ he knew was stealing his life.

Dean stood up and put a hand on the back of his neck to rub out the kink that had built up when he'd fallen asleep. Lisa stirred. Her bleary gaze took in Ben, and then turned to Dean. She winced as she straightened. "Any change?" she asked.

Dean shook his head. "Nurse was here again about 4:30, but no, nothing."

She put her head into her hands tiredly. "Why is this happening," she said to no one.

Dean came over and dug his hands into her stiff shoulders, massaging the tight soreness he knew came with nights spent holding vigils in hospital rooms. "Hey. Ben's no wimp. He'll be okay."

Lisa shook her head. "You don't know that. You heard them, they have _no idea_ what's going on, Dean."

Dean bit the inside of his lip, and the urge to confide in Lisa warred with his need to protect her, to keep her and Ben safe from the things he had spent his life hunting.

"He could be dying," she said, the emotion drained out of her voice by exhaustion.

"He's _not dying,"_ Dean said with harsh conviction that sounded like anger. "Ben's not going to die. Okay?"

Looking down, Dean saw tears slipping out of her closed eyes. "Hey!" He dropped down beside her, coming to eye level, and put a hand on her cheek. He brushed tears away with his thumb. "I swear. He's gonna be okay. I'm not gonna let anything happen to him."

She opened her eyes and met his. "I don't know what to do," she admitted.

"Just… You just take care of Ben. Let me fix this, okay?"

Lisa's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

Dean stood up and turned to pick up his jacket that was draped on his chair. "I think there's something I need to take care of."

"Wait." Lisa stood up and put herself between Dean and the door. "What do you _mean,_ Dean?"

"Lisa—"

"_Dean._ What are you trying to tell me? That Ben is—sick because-? _What?"_

_I'm saying this is one of ours,_ he would say to Sam if Sam were here. The understanding would pass between them as easily as breathing. They would argue about the details, but it would be in the language they both spoke. _One of ours._ With Lisa, he struggled to find the words.

"Look, I'm just saying, it could be something… else. Not something they're used to treating in places like this."

Lisa's face tightened. "Something _supernatural,_ Dean?" There was anger, blame edging into her voice

"Maybe. Bobby thinks—"

"You talked to _Bobby?"_ Dean was caught off guard by the betrayal he heard from her. "So this is serious." Now Dean heard resolve. Hard resolve. And something very much like hate. "Get out."

"I can fix this, Lise."

"Get the fuck out." She moved toward him suddenly, bringing her hands up to thrust against his chest, sending him stumbling back a step. "How dare you bring that shit here, on us? On _Ben?_ How dare you!"

Dean looked down as he forced his arms into his jacket, refusing to let the hurt show. "I'm not letting anything happen to Ben," he said.

Lisa said nothing. Her face was drawn and her eyes were on Ben, tracing the soft, rhythmic pulsing of the heart monitor.

Dean closed the door behind him and dialed Bobby, bringing the phone to his ear as he broke into a run toward the exit.

* * *

_To be continued._


	4. Chapter 4

**Part 4**

A group of men at the far end of the bar had a game of Texas Hold'em going. Dean noticed this absently has he held up a finger to signal the bartender.

"You just want me to leave this?" she asked with a wry smile, refilling his glass for the fifth time.

"Do I look like I should be trusted with it?" Dean retorted.

She took in the slump of his posture and the deep circles under his eyes. "You look like it's going to take more than this to fix whatever you've got riding on you," she said, not unkindly, picking up the bills he'd set down on the table and moving on to her next patron.

Dean looked down at the swirl of amber liquid. "Dammit, Sam," he muttered. He winced at the memory of the look on his brother's face, the tone of his voice. He understood on an intimate level what that look meant. Flashes of Hell assailed him from all directions at once, and he gripped the glass tight to ground himself in the present. He wondered fleetingly how much pressure he would have to apply to shatter a glass in his hand.

Some things break more easily than others.

He smiled a grim smile to himself at his own morbid joke. He wondered what madness felt like, and if this was how it started.

A low, familiar voice interrupted his train of thought. "Mind if I join you?"

Dean looked up at the older man who pulled out a stool at the bar and sat down next to him. "Bobby."

Bobby caught the eye of the bartender and pointed to Dean's glass. She nodded and indicated _just a sec._

Dean leaned forward on his elbows. "Nice place you have here," he said conspiratorially, trying for lightness. "You come here often, gorgeous?"

"Cute."

Bobby waited as the bartender set down a second glass and filled it. Once they were alone again, he gave Dean a hard look. "You doin' all right?"

The weight seemed to settle back over Dean. "I have no idea what to think."

"You mean about Ben. Or Sam?"

"Sam was _here._ Bobby, this wasn't some… hallucination, or… or Demi Moore thing. As much as he and I used to joke about haunting each other's asses, that's not what this is."

"I know, son. I believe you."

"He made me swear not to try and bring him back. I know why he said it, and I know he meant it. But Bobby, if there's even a chance… Any chance I have to get him out, I'm taking it. All bets are off. "

"You said he was trying to tell you something. About Ben?"

Dean's jaw clenched. "Yeah. Before he…"

Bobby hated to press, but needed the details. "Did you _see_ anything else besides Sam? A… light, or a flash of any kind? Was there any other sound?"

"No. No, it was just him, and he was… struggling to get the words out." The meaning behind Bobby's questions dawned on Dean. "You found something."

"Some_one_. Asked him to meet us here." Bobby nodded at the poker game in the back of the room.

Dean followed Bobby's gaze. "Friends of yours?" he asked.

"Hunters," Bobby filled in. "Come on." He picked up his glass, and Dean did the same, shadowing Bobby as he picked his way through the maze of mostly empty tables and chairs.

Members of the group looked up at them, breaking into grins of recognition when they saw it was Bobby Singer.

"Sorry to bust up your game, boys," said Bobby. "You mind if we steal Hank here for a minute?"

The man named Hank scraped his chair back and set his cards face-down on the table. "Next round's on me," he said to the group. He hitched up his jeans and tucked the loose-fitting, button-down shirt back into his waistband as he trailed Bobby and Dean toward the exit.

Stepping outside into the cool night air, Bobby turned to both boys and said, "Hank, this is Dean. Dean… Hank here has what you might call some _expertise_ in what we're dealing with."

Dean nodded to Hank by way of acknowledgement. "Meaning, what exactly?"

Hank looked down and unbuttoned the cuff of his left sleeve, then his right, efficiently rolling each cuff up to the forearm and pushing them up, revealing a long set of angry, red scars that traveled the length of each arm. To Dean, they looked like electricity burns.

Hank held out his arms for examination. "It took my wife," he explained. "But not before I figured out how to kill it."

Dean said, "You killed it?"

"Said I _figured it out."_ He looked at Dean steadily, and Dean saw the depth of the man's pain and loss laid out bare, like a whole different set of scars. "And I intend to."

"How?"

Bobby held up his hands. "Killing it is not the only consideration. Hank, what I didn't tell you earlier is that we may be dealing with a two-party phone line here."

Dean and Hank exchanged a look, and waited for Bobby to go on.

"It's likely that when this thing cracks open a conduit to Hell, energy travels both ways – up and down, so to speak. In theory, anything that's in the vicinity, _Hell-side,_ could latch on and find themselves yanked through the energy field from one place to the other."

Dean was frowning. "You think Sam managed to grab hold of a tentacle and swing up out of the cage, courtesy of electro-monster?"

"It's possible. That is, until the switch flips off or something else yanks him back."

Dean felt something clench in his chest. "Something else. Like Lucifer."

Hank's eyes widened and he started shaking his head. "I don't know anything about any of that. This thing got ahold of my wife, same way Bobby here told me it's got your boy. She fought it off as long as she could. I was too late, but eventually I got my hands on _these."_

Hank's hands went to his pockets and he pulled out two small, ornately carved daggers. He held them out to show Dean. Dean took one, turning it over in his hand. "These markings…?"

"Apparently it's an instruction manual," said Bobby, with a soft chuckle. "How to kill a monster in three easy steps."

"Yeah, _easy,"_ Hank said bitterly. "I don't think you fellas have any idea what you're dealing with. I've been hunting my whole life and this thing, it right near took me down with it."

"If it's alive," Dean said with conviction, "it can die."

"Boy, it's like I said before, if you would_ pay attention."_ Bobby snatched the dagger from Dean and handed it back to Hank. "This ain't just about killin'. It's got its claws into Ben, which means figuring out a way to… I don't' know, kill it gentle."

Suddenly, a cold realization washed over Dean. "Bobby. If Sam can use this – what did you call it, conduit?—to get free… is it possible Lucifer could do the same thing?"

Bobby considered it. "I think if that were possible, he would have found a way to do it eons ago. The seals are back in place now, which means he shouldn't be going anywhere."

"Then why is Sam able to break out?"

Hank had been shifting his weight from foot to foot and studying the ornate Latin words carved into the blades of his daggers. He looked up at Dean, "This your brother you're talking about?"

"Yeah," Dean said.

"Look, I don't know you. But it seems like from the way you've been talking about him that the two of you were close."

"You could say that."

"You close to the boy, too?"

The last thing Dean was in the mood for was to play feelings show-and-tell with a perfect stranger. "What is it you're asking me?"

Bobby looked like he would love to know, as well.

Hank looked from Dean to Bobby and then back to Dean, and leaned in. "I know this thing," he said, with a low, dangerous edge to his voice. "I've hunted it. Tracked it. Watched it. I know what draws it and what chases it off. Like I said, I'm not gonna pretend to know anything more than what I know for a fact, which is that this thing _killed_ the woman I loved. If it's got your boy," he handed both daggers to Dean, "we kill it before it kills him. And if we can use it to get your brother back, so much the better."

"I'm all for that," Dean said. "Any thoughts on the _how_ part of this equation?"

Hank smiled grimly. "These scars? I know how to grab it and hold on. We hold the channel open long enough for your brother – Sam – to jump through. Then I end its miserable little life."

"Now hold on," Bobby interrupted. "Before you both go off half-cocked on this. We don't know what holding the channel open would do to Ben. Plus, there's no guarantee that Sam would even make it out if Lucifer has anything to say about it."

Dean had his answer ready. "Then I go in after him."

"Into _Hell._"

"Hey, once you get the crowd on their feet, the least you owe them is an encore."

Bobby shook his head. "It's not just Hell, this would be you dropping face-first into the _cage_, son. And the most likely scenario I see playing out is you and Sam _both_ being trapped down there."

"At least I'd have a shot at _doing_ something." _Protecting him,_ he meant. _The prime directive._ He turned to Hank. "We're doing this. You're in?"

Hank smiled, a look that spoke of revenge and retribution. "You're damn straight."

* * *

In his dream, Dean sees himself standing on the rocky ledge of a vast precipice, surrounded by nothing on all sides. The air is almost too hot to breathe, too thick with soot and sulfur. A harsh, dry wind tears across the cliffs, chapping the exposed skin on his cheeks and making Dean's eyes narrow into a squint.

"SAM?" he calls. The wind steals his voice, carrying the word away in the roar of a current.

He stands still, listening.

The wind is his only answer, howling and whipping all around him.

He edges closer to the side of the cavern that lays before him, conscious of the crumbling ground and rocks skittering under his feet. One of the larger rocks he steps on suddenly gives way, tumbling free to hurl down the mountainside, and Dean's leg goes down with it. He twists to try and catch himself, and feels a firm grip on his arm hauling him back to his feet.

"I knew you'd find me," says Sam. A faint hint of a smile plays on his face. He looks… Dean doesn't know how he expected his brother to look in Hell, but this isn't it. He looks… like _Sam._ Sam's soft, green eyes squint at Dean, wrinkling his nose, wisps of long hair caught and whipped in every direction by the harsh wind.

Dean steadies himself on his feet. "I thought you were… what happened to the cage?"

Sam looks around, raising his voice slightly over the wind to say, "Do you like it? Nice, huh. This goes on for miles. I've never even seen the sides of it, but I know they're there. I can feel them. Like heat."

"It's not what I expected."

"Oh," Sam says, understanding perhaps what it is Dean had been expecting. "No. This is- It's different every time."

"Every time _what?"_

Sam gives a small, mirthless laugh.

"They're enjoying this, you know."

"You mean Lucifer? Michael? What, are they just hiding out in the hills somewhere, mountain-man style?"

-flick-

In the space of a heartbeat, the landscape around them shifts and then quickly slides back into place.

-flick-

_Blood. Fire. Pain. Screaming. Torture. Iron. Rack. Red. Black. Blood. Pain. Burning. Blinding. Shrieking. Terror. DEANhelpme._

-flick-

The wind swirls around them, picking up dust and scattering a few small rocks at their feet. Sam looks down, his nose wrinkling again as he squints up at Dean with that same sad, regretful smile. "You weren't supposed to see that."

Dean feels shaken to the core. "Sammy…"

"No, Dean, don't. It's okay."

"Sam, I'm going to get you out of here—"

"You know I can't let you do it."

Dean feels himself shouting, and the louder he shouts the less of his voice carries through the wind. "SAM. I am getting you out. Just reach through. I'll be there. I'll be holding it open. You find my hand and you reach for it. I'll grab you and I'll hold on to you! I won't let go!"

Sam flickers.

"Don't you dare put my life ahead of his," Sam says solemnly. "Dean. Don't you dare."

* * *

_To be continued._


	5. Chapter 5

_Time is different in Hell._

Dean turned his phone over and over in his hands, memorizing the rough nicks and scratches that marred the surface.

_Five minutes._ He'd been staring at the phone for five minutes. Five minutes was like two days. Two _days._ How long had Sam been gone now? He closed his eyes, trying not to think about it, trying not to see his brother, his soft, expressive eyes turned haunted.

The sense of urgency, the need to _act,_ gnawed at him. And the dread of calling Lisa held him paralyzed.

"You gonna use that thing, or buy it dinner?" Bobby asked pointedly, seated across from Dean at his kitchen table. Then he eased back on his tone a bit. "It's not going to get any easier."

Dean exhaled and closed his hand around the phone, pushing his chair back. "Okay," he said. He moved out back, trudging along one of the familiar rows of salvaged cars as he dialed, stopping to stand and lean up against one of the dusty metal bodies as he listened to Lisa phone ring three times. His heart was hammering. _Don't pick up,_ he urged it, and then wondered at his own stupidity. He needed her to pick up. He dreaded her picking up.

The phone line clicked. "Dean," Lisa said, without preamble.

Dean's mind went blank. Every word he'd planned to say escaped him, and he fumbled awkwardly. "Lisa… hey…"

"Dean, I—"

"Lisa, look, I'm sorry," he blurted. "Just listen to me, that's all I ask. You don't have to believe me, and God knows you don't have to forgive me—"

"Dean, it's okay." She sounded tired. "I didn't mean to…" She sighed. "I was going to call you."

Dean's fingers tightened on the phone. "You have no idea how much I want this to not be happening," he said.

"It's not your fault. It never was. I just… I think I needed someone to blame."

"I get that." He did. He'd tried for years to pin the blame for his and Sam's shit luck on so many different things, and somehow it never took. It was just shit, and there were never enough things to kill or people to save that would change it.

There was a moment of silence. Then Dean heard a barely audible sniff on the other line, and he realized Lisa was crying. The sound pulled at something deep inside him. He wanted badly to say the right thing, but the words hovered just out of reach, as if he simply lacked the vocabulary needed for moments like this.

Lisa's voice was quiet but composed when she spoke again. "I don't know how to fight something I don't understand."

"Then let _me,"_ Dean said. "Let me help him."

"You're sure you can?"

"I'm _sure_ I can. I just need you to trust me."

Something twisted in Dean's gut as he said it. How much of his last months with Sam had been spent in a wrestling match of trust? A battle of wills, of wrong and right, each one firm in their believe that the other was wrong.

But Lisa didn't hesitate. "I do trust you."

* * *

Hank ran a hand over his too-long hair, pushing it back and under the faded blue trucker cap he always wore. Before sliding into the pickup over the cracked neoprene of the driver's seat, he raised his eyes to the rear view mirror, checking the empty lot behind him, then to the floorboards of the passenger's side where he knew he could easily reach the 30-30 rifle, if for some reason he became separated from the trusty Beretta tucked inside his boot.

Satisfied, he plugged the key into the ignition and coaxed the old girl back to life.

As he drove the back roads to Bobby Singer's place, his eyes drifted from the stretch of asphalt down to the dashboard to linger on the faded photo held tight to the dusty glass with yellowed, peeling cellophane tape. Mara smiled gracefully back at him at she always did, hands on her hips and her shoulder playfully turned toward the camera so that her softly curled brown hair dropped forward over the sleeve of her blue dress.

Eyes back to the road, then back to Mara's smile. Then to Mara's trim waistline, revealing not even a hint of the precious bump he knew was hidden there. They hadn't even told her parents yet.

Hank had _never_ told her parents. And they didn't speak now, anyway, so it probably didn't matter.

He found himself urging the old pickup faster than it was comfortable going. After so many years spent waiting for this, he there was nothing holding him back. Part of him hoped it would burn him out like a firecracker, frying that sadistic son of a bitch along with him. This was what he hadn't spoken aloud to Winchester and the old man, although something told him the younger hunter understood. Some deeper, darker, wordless understanding had passed between them, that was born of the same soul-crushing loss and aloneness. Every day he'd lived longer than his precious Mara, the gentle, loving soul who'd brightened his worthless life with her kindness, her beautiful inner glow, was another day longer than he'd ever meant to be on this earth.

His eyes drifted again to Mara's middle. _For you, son, _he thought. His foot settled like lead on the gas pedal, closing the distance left between him and the showdown he was owed.

* * *

"We're all set," Lisa announced. She zipped the duffle containing Ben's clothes and belongings, hefting it onto the bed beside her son. Ben sat cross-legged on the unmade bed in shorts and a t-shirt which hung loosely on his small frame. He was smiling, but the shadows under his eyes were a bit too pronounced, and there was a more defined sharpness to the angles of his face. But the news that they were leaving had lifted his spirits and brought back some of the life Dean had missed in Ben.

"Just let me go sign all your papers, and we can go. Be back in a sec, kiddo," she said with a quick scuffle of his hair.

Dean slid a chair close to Ben's bedside. "Signing papers is nurse-speak for 'you're not going anywhere soon,'" he clarified. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a new, unwrapped deck of playing cards, holding them up so Ben could see. "Still got that new card smell," he said. "You game?"

Ben grinned and scooted back on the bed to settle back against the pillows. "Bring it," he said coolly.

Dean unwound the plastic wrap and gripped the edges of the slippery, new cards, rifling the cut deck together in a crisp shuffle and then arching them into a bridge. He tapped the edge against the plastic table that hovered over the edge of Ben's bed.

"Five card stud," he announced, dealing out the cards. "Honest man's game. Nothing wild but the dealer."

Ben smirked and picked up his hand, examining it with a practiced, neutral poker face that made Dean proud.

Dean moved a king of spades next to his queen and ten, looking at a possible straight flush. Nice.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Ben asked bluntly, eyes never leaving his cards.

Dean looked up at him, trying to read his blank expression. "What did your mom tell you?"

"Basically nothing, and that we're trusting you."

"Huh." Dean set his two discarded cards face down beside the deck. "And you're okay with that?"

"No, not really." He put his cards down and crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest. "I'm not stupid, Dean. I know I'm not sick because there's something _wrong_ with me, it's… whatever it is, I know you're going to try and kill it. I just… think you should let me help."

"Let you help," Dean repeated. He didn't know what else to say.

"Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. I want to do what you do."

It took Dean a second to realize what the kid meant.

"No," he said forcefully, a cold pit forming inside of him. "You don't. That's never gonna happen."

"But when you were my age—"

He reached across the bed and grabbed Ben's elbow, a bit more roughly than he'd intended. "I didn't have a _choice_, Ben. _You_ have a choice."

Ben jerked his arm away. "What _choice?_ If I'm gonna die, I-I…" His lip trembled, and he folded his arms even more tightly over his chest, drawing himself into a tight little ball of closed-off emotion.

Dean's breath caught in his throat. "You're not going to die, Ben. Why would you think that?"

"I don't _want_ to die."

His voice sounded so small and scared that something in Dean responded to it on instinct, all his own trepidation falling away as he slipped into the familiar mantle of Protector. His big-brother voice came as automatically as breathing, sounding strong and sure, confident and reassuring.

"Listen to me," he said. "Nothing bad is going to happen to you as long as I'm here."

_Sammy was literally trembling. Dean could feel his brother's small shoulders quaking under his arm as he pulled Sammy in close to him. The air in the closet was stiflingly warm, a mixture of heavy coats, pine boards, and rubber-soled shoes. And fear. Dean could actually smell it, coming off of Sam in waves._

"_W-we're going to d-die," Sammy stuttered in a terrified whisper, looking up at Dean with abject certainty, his eyes wide in the darkness._

_Any fear that Dean might have felt evaporated in the presence of Sammy's. He shook his head and placed a finger over his little brother's lips. His other hand rested on the rifle outlined in shadow on his knees, the one he'd only fired twice during practice with Dad, but that he knew with utmost certainty he could use with deadly accuracy. He leaned down, touching his head to Sam's, bringing his mouth close to Sammy's ear, and breathed, "I've got you. You're okay." _

The fear seemed to drain out of Ben almost in exactly the same way it had from Dean's four-year-old brother, first bringing calm to the frantic searching in his panic-stricken eyes then releasing the tension from his tight shoulders.

"Okay," Ben exhaled. He looked down at his hands. He reached out and picked up his five playing cards. Then, not quite looking at Dean, Ben ventured, "Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah."

"How did… how did Sam… die?"

Dean ground his teeth hard into his bottom lip to keep himself away from the precipice. "How many cards did you say you're keeping, there?"

"I… I guess, I need three." Ben picked three cards out of his hand and set them down on the plastic tray-table. "But Dean, did Sam, was he-"

"Okay, three cards it is." Dean peeled three cards off the top of the deck, handing them over to Ben. He was not going to do this now. Not now. He picked up two cards for himself. "Dealer takes two," he announced.

"I'm sorry. About Sam."

Dean tried to smile, but it came out as more of a wince. "Yeah. Me too."

"Was it a hunt?"

"Ben, just drop it, okay? Jesus!"

A wounded look passed over Ben's face, and Dean regretted snapping. "Look, I'm sorry," he said. "It's just, it's not exactly my favorite topic of conversation. You know?"

Ben nodded, eyes downcast.

Dean noticed that the two cards he'd drawn had busted his straight, leaving him with a hand full of nothing. He sighed and folded his cards together into a slim stack and set them down on top of the deck. "Sam was—" God, it hurt to even say his name out loud. He cleared his throat.

Ben jumped in, "It's okay, you don't have to tell me."

But yes, he did. He owed Ben _something_. "Sam was my brother. And you know, when you have a little brother, you look out for him. You make sure he stays safe. That's what I did, it was my job. Until I—I couldn't." Dean stood up abruptly and paced to the other end of the room, digging his fingers hard into his eyes to force back the weeks of tears he was holding in. The precipice yawned before him. No. He knew if he let himself fall, if he let this finally overtake him, there was no coming back from it. There would be no more cool-headed, rational thought. The thing inside him that he kept chained up and locked away, all the violent anger and pain, would overtake him, and that would be the end of pretending. No, no no, not now. Not yet. He just needed to hold onto himself for a little longer. With a physical act of will, he pushed his feelings as far down as they would go, back inside his solid, lead box.

When he turned back toward Ben, the kid actually had tears running down his own face. As terrible as seeing this made Dean feel, he was almost grateful for it, because _reassurance_ fit solidly in his job description.

"It's gonna be okay, Ben," he said. "What happened to Sam, that's _not_ going to happen to you."

"Your brother was brave," Ben offered.

Dean nodded, offering back a sad smile. "The bravest."

Ben seemed to remember that he was still holding his cards. He glanced down at them and then broke out in a wide, mischievous smile. "Oh, hey! Check this out!"

"Nice poker face," Dean teased. "All right, call 'em. What have you got?"

Ben turned his cards around with a flourish. Dean felt the temperature of the room drop at least ten degrees.

Ben was holding four jacks.

* * *

The ride back to Bobby's was tense. Dean drove with his right arm looped over the seat, turning to glance back at Ben's sleeping form every few minutes. Lisa sat wedged into the corner of the back seat with Ben spread out and leaning against her, her arms wrapped protectively around his chest. Her eyes were vacant and sad, staring out the window straight ahead at nothing.

_Just trust me,_ he'd told her, not wanting to have to tell her the details of the ritual that was carved into Hank's daggers. He suspected she didn't want to know, and that was fine with Dean. _Trust me,_ trust me to risk your son's life to save my brother's. Trust me to kill the evil that's killing your son, but only after I use it to get Sam back.

God, he so didn't deserve her trust. Part of him wished she would see through him and scream terrible, hurtful, _true_ things at him. Because _he_ was the one who didn't deserve to come out of this thing alive. Ben was innocent, he didn't deserve any of this, and if Sam knew what Dean was planning…

_Don't you dare put my life ahead of his,_ he heard Sam's voice come back to him from his dream, and he heard the raw pleading behind it. Sam would never, _never_ be okay with this.

Of course, maybe it wouldn't work. And Ben would die. And Sam would stay dead.

And Dean would follow them both.

Because he'd already decided. If he couldn't save Ben, he would die trying. There was no way he could live with himself if any part of this went south.

_But what if…_ The thought he had not allowed himself to even think was working its way forward into his consciousness. _What if you can only save one?_ He angrily pushed the thought aside, not willing to admit what he knew deep down to be true. Despite what Sam had said to him in his dream, _begged_ him not to consider, Dean knew who he would save if he had to make a choice. Sam would always come first, he would always risk anything and anyone to save Sam, and he hated himself for it.

The silence inside the car stretched on until the Impala rolled through the gates of Singer Salvage.

Dean saw Bobby step out to meet them as he pulled up to the house and threw the car into park, coming around to help Lisa untangle herself from her sleeping son.

Dean opened the rear door, and Lisa shifted her weight under Ben, pushing the damp hair from his pale forehead. "Hey, kiddo," she murmured. "Time to wake up."

"It's okay, let me get him," Dean said, leaning in to gently lift Ben and step back with the boy in his arms. Ben's eyes fluttered but he let his head roll back against Dean's shoulder. Lisa pushed herself up out of the car.

"Do you want me to take him in?" Lisa asked.

"No. I've got him. You're sure you don't want to stay?"

It was what they had decided in the car. Lisa had grilled Dean about risks and side-effects as if they were about to perform some kind of surgery, always veering just shy of ever acknowledging the supernatural element involved. Dean suspected that was where her trust came in. She would ride with them to Bobby's, she'd decided firmly, and then have Bobby drive her home.

Standing there in the salvage yard, with night falling, holding her weakened boy in his arms, Dean wondered if this would be the end of her trust in him. He wouldn't have blamed her in that moment if she'd reached out to snatch her sleeping son away from Dean and his hollow promises.

But Lisa just shook her head resolutely, and before she turned to go, she put a hand on Dean's arm. "Don't let anything happen to him," she said.

"He's going to be okay," Dean said with feigned confidence, sinking lower than he had ever felt in his miserable life.

Bobby nodded to Dean. "Hank's upstairs. We're all set."

Holding Ben tightly against him, Dean mounted the stairs to the spare bedroom he and Sam had bunked in over the years. He carefully laid Ben down on one of the twin beds and eyed Hank, who was standing beside the aged dresser. Hank tilted his head toward Dean in greeting, slipping a Zippo out of his jeans pocket and lit the sequence of candles that he'd arranged.

Ben's eyes were closed, his breathing shallow but steady. He looked so damn small.

"What happens now?" Dean asked.

"Now we make this thing dead," Hank said, picking up the twin daggers off of the daggers, which caught a gleam of reflected candlelight in the dim room. Hank's eyes held the same gleam. "Right fucking now."

* * *

_To be continued… Last chapter coming soon!_


	6. Chapter 6

Hank set the pair of daggers down on the nearest side table and reached into his shirt pocket to fish out a beat-up pack of Marlboro reds. Dean raised his eyebrows, giving the man a facial-expression equivalent of _what the fuck._

"You smoke?" Hank asked casually, inclining the pack in Dean's direction. Dean shook his head, his expression darkening from utter bewilderment to irritation. He watched with growing impatience as the man tapped out a single cigarette and brought it to his lips, following it with the quick flick of his Zippo.

"Too much work," Dean answered automatically, his pat response whenever he was offered a smoke in a bar, since it felt true. _And Dad would have beat my ass_, which was the real reason why he really did or didn't do most things, but Hank grinned appreciatively at Dean's answer.

"That's the truth," he admitted with a knowing nod. "Better off not." He took a slow drag and exhaled, then brought his eyes down to Ben, who was lying pale and still on the bed in Bobby's spare bedroom.

Dean's hands clenched into fists, hidden inside the pockets of his jacket. He resisted the urge to actually shove Hank up against the wall and pound answers out of him. He forced a measure of calm into his voice. "So," he said, "we just… do what, then?"

Hank took another drag. "It'll show."

"And then what?"

"I'll take care of it."

Dean worked the muscle in his jaw. "Look, man. You know I… I _appreciate_ everything you're doing here. I do. But I didn't exactly get a _debriefing_ from Bobby on this whole ritual or whatever it is we're doing, so care to clue me in?"

Hank shook his head. "Listen, when this goes down, it goes down. I should be able to handle it. You really don't need to worry about it."

Rage very nearly exploded out of Dean. He advanced on Hank and yanked the cigarette out of his mouth, flinging it down and grinding it angrily against the wood floorboards. Then he took a fistful of Hank's flannel shirt and drove his knuckles up against the man's collarbone. "Don't," Dean growled, _"tell me_ not to worry about it. You have _no idea_ what I've had to worry about."

Hank struggled worm his way free of Dean's hold. "Okay," he said. "Okay, man. I get it. I'm-"

"This is going to work_,"_ Dean said vehemently. "I'm here to _make sure_ it works. Now you're gonna tell me—"

The lights in the room flickered.

"Aw, shit," Hank swore, shoving Dean's hands away and grabbing the pair of daggers from the table. Ben suddenly cried out weakly behind Dean, his fingers digging into the blanket.

"_Voco lux lucis ut obscurum ex abyssus!" _Hank shouted. He loomed over Ben, holding a dagger in each hand. Dean was suddenly overcome with an instinct to throw himself in front of Ben to protect him, which he fought back and watched as Hank brought the two blades together in the air over Ben, forming a cross.

As soon as metal touched metal, Dean was thrown back several steps by a burst of energy. He brought his arm up to shield his eyes as a blinding bold of light erupted through the room.

"Hank!" Dean yelled, trying to force his eyes open to see through the ghosted afterimages seared into his retinas.

There was a rising, whining hum, like the sound of a defibrillator coming up to full charge. Hank's face was turned into the side of his shoulder away from the light, his arms still outstretched over Ben but trembling and gripping the hilt of each dagger as if he were holding on to two live wires.

"_Operor non valeo est locus!" _Hank shouted in a voice that demanded to be heard over the whine now reverberating at painful decibels through Dean's clasped his hands over his ears. _"OPEROR NON-"_

There was a flash, or at least Dean thought it might have been a flash, and then he swore he heard someone screaming. And then.

* * *

"Dean."

He hears his name at least twice, in between stretches of silence and wind.

The second time, he turns toward the sound, and something hard and sharp like gravel grinds under the back of his head. There's a weight on his chest. A hand. The weight of it is comforting, reassuring. He opens his eyes to an ashen sky of gathering storm clouds and a silhouette kneeling over him that he knows.

He clutches Sam's arm, trying to remember why having Sam so near, so physically close, makes him feel like crying.

Sam gives him a smile and pats his chest. "You're okay," he says. "We've got to move. Can you sit up?"

A slow, deep echo of thunder rolls over the empty hills surrounding them. He's dreaming again. This is the same cliff, the same rocky, windswept landscape devoid of any sign of life except a few stern tufts of determined vegetation forcing its way between the rock crevices. He recognizes the burnt quality of the air that makes his lungs sting when he breathes in. But now, the oncoming storm gives the dry air a cold, metallic tinge, and everything seems draped in cloud and shadow.

He tries to remember why he's here. It feels important.

He gladly accepts the hand Sam offers, even if it is more for the sake of going through this motion with his brother one more time. Sam keeps a steadying hand on his back as he gets his feet under him. Sam is watching the sky, and a shadow of worry passes over his face. Dean can't see his eyes. Then, selfishly, he remembers why he doesn't want to.

An impressive streak of lightning travels across the darkening sky, followed seconds later by an explosion of thunder that makes Sam start, his hand moving to clench Dean's upper arm. "They know you're here," he whispers. "I can't… I couldn't…"

"Sam, what…?" Dean is lost. He looks searchingly at his brother for any answers, any clue.

Sam looks back at Dean pleadingly, his expression helpless. "Dean. You have to go _now_. You have to get to him, before they do."

"Dude, I don't know what you're—"

Sam makes a noise in his throat, part frustration and part desperation, and then he shoves the palm of his hand forcefully against Dean's forehead.

The rocky cliffs around Dean _flick_ away, and he's standing in the middle of an inferno. Every one of his senses threaten to shut down from the overload of sudden and conflicting input. Then overpowering noise, the stench, the burning and freezing, the light and dark. There are walls of fire towering around him on all sides, and he hears tortured screaming, and he doesn't have to see through the black smoke and flame to know that the writhing, struggling thing being burned alive and pulled apart is Sam.

Dean gasps. Sam is drawing his hand back, bringing back the ragged cliffs and the threatening storm, and Dean clutches Sam's hand, catching his fingers between his own. Dean is breathing hard, and there are tears in his eyes.

"Fuck. This isn't real. This is a dream. This is a fucking, fucked-up dream and I need to fucking wake up." He's still holding on to Sam's hand. He can't make himself let go.

Sam is looking down, avoiding Dean's eyes.

"S-Sam?"

"I didn't want you to see it. It's easier if you don't see it. But it's happening." He looks up at Dean urgently, pleadingly. "Do you understand?"

Understanding dawns on Dean slowly but then drops like an anvil. "This is the cage," he says.

Sam nods.

"You're hiding it. Sam, are you… you're… you're hiding _me?"_

"It's hard, Dean. I can do it, but you have to hurry. Find Ben."

And suddenly, he remembers the important thing.

"Do you know where he is?"

Another bolt of lightning crosses the sky, chased by a roar of thunder. Electricity.

"Never mind," Dean says, "I think I can follow a trail."

"It's close," says Sam. "It dropped when you did. Go."

Dean tugs his brother's hand, the one he hasn't yet let go of. "You too."

"I can't, Dean. They'll know."

"Sam, don't be stupid."

Sam yanks free of Dean's grip and takes a step backward. His eyes are wide and desperate. "If you don't go, _now,_ it's going to be too late, and _you can't do that to me, _Dean. Please."

Dean hesitates. He looks out over the ridge, then back at his brother. "Sam, I can't," he says. "I'm sorry, I know I'm supposed to make the selfless choice here and go after Ben, because that's what you would do, but you're my brother, Sam. I'm the fucking selfish one. I need you back, so much."

They're the words he had felt himself nearly screaming in his head every night, through the tears he forced himself not to cry and the whiskey he drank instead so he could try not to feel anything at all. _I need you back so much. _And how fucking selfish does that make him, that Sam had literally gone to Hell to save him and Dean is dying inside from the pain of simply missing his brother.

He never gets the chance to say more. Dean lurches forward, thrown off balance and into Sam as the ground under his feet shifts, unleashing an avalanche of rock to tumble from the mountainside beneath them and down into the dark, unseen depths below.

Lightning strikes the cliff above them, setting off a new chain reaction. Dean rolls, yanking Sam with him out of the way as rock slams into the ground and sending up suffocating clouds of dust and pulverized earth. He coughs into the crook of his arm, scrambling to his feet and looking around for anywhere that might be safe from falling rock. With a quick glance back at Sam, he darts under the sheltering ledge of an overhanging cliff, trusting Sam to follow, which he does. And this feels so normal, so right. It shouldn't hurt so much.

He can hear Sam breathing hard next to him. He almost doesn't hear the faint, panicked cry over the gusting wind. It's when Sam looks up at him questioningly that he actually realizes it wasn't his imagination.

"That's him, that's Ben," Dean says.

The next crack of lightning strikes so close, it leaves a charge in the air that raises the hair on Dean's arms.

There is the distinct sound of shoe scraping against rock, and then a little boy's voice, "D-Dean—help!"

Without waiting any longer to analyze the situation, Dean breaks away from the ledge into a run toward the sound, and he hopes Sam will stay put, just stay safe so he can – what? His brain runs in circles around the two things that matter: Find Ben. Get Sam. Maybe achieving those two things will mean they'll slide into place like the next pieces in a game of Tetris, or the missing cards in a straight flush. Because the alternative is to admit to himself that he's staring into a void with no idea which way is way out. If there is a way out. And there has to be a way out. Because _fuck._

Feeling like everthing is happening in slow motion, he slides to his hands and knees and leans dangerously, precariously over the edge of the precipice and shouts Ben's name. He can see a tuft of dark brown hair. A tennis shoe kicking out.

Dean drops flat against the ground and reaches down. "Ben, do you see my hand?" he calls. "Grab my hand! You see my hand and you reach for it. I'll grab you and I'll hold on to you! I'm getting you out of here!"

The words sound familiar as soon as he says them. He knows he's said them before, here, but not to Ben.

"Sam?" he gasps.

For an instant, the world slide-_shifts_ into red-terror-fire and then quickly rights itself. Dean squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, shakes off the horrible, sinking feeling that everything he loves is slipping away. _Sam. Ben. I've got you. I'm getting you out._

"Ben!" Dean calls down, stretching every finger as far as he can while straining to keep his balance. At last, he makes eye contact over the ridge dividing them, and it sends a surge of emotion through Ben so strong that it drags a ragged whimper from him. Dean can see blood where his fingers are gripping the jagged rock.

He keeps his voice calm but authoritative, the way his dad would issue orders to him on a hunt. "I'm coming down to you, okay Ben. Don't panic. Keep your muscles loose. Keep feeling along there with your toes to see if you can get a hold anywhere."

He rolls his lower body over the ledge, supporting his weight with his arms until he finds a solid foot hold.

"Dean—it's, it's—" Ben starts, but Dean doesn't hear the rest. He looks up, startled, at the dark figure looming over him. He immediately recognizes it from the illustrations in Bobby's books.

It smiles menacingly. Then, it reaches down and seizes both Dean's forearms in a vice-like grip.

White-hot lightning courses through Dean's shoulders, encasing his chest in a solid band of electricity. The tendons in his neck and shoulders arch outward, throwing his head back, his body contorting in a rigid spasm of sheer agony. _The cliff,_ his brain tried to distantly communicate to his seizing body, _behind you, the sheer drop. Don't fall._

_As if we have a choice,_ Dean resigns himself, feeling synapse after synapse shut down, like house lights switching off from one end of an arena concert to the other.

His consciousness flickers. He's aware of the moment when Ben's terrified expression transforms to outrage and horror.

And he's aware of Sam. Sam is reaching for him, and he reaches back, he always reaches back.

* * *

Dean gasped, choking on air as if he'd been fighting his way to the surface.

"Take it easy, boy. Here." He felt pills and a cold glass being pressed into his hands before his eyes had a chance to focus, and Bobby's voice was urging him to take them.

"Sam—?"

"Ben's okay. You did it, son. Ben's gonna be just fine."

Dean caught every unsaid word. He turned away, looked at the far wall, his eyes dull. His expression slack.

When he was sure he trusted his voice not to break, he asked, "Did Hank…?"

Bobby shook his head, bringing one hand to the back of his neck, to the back of his cap. "Didn't make it. What he did worked, though. Killed the sonuvabitch – knocked out everyone in this room with it. I thought I'd lost you though, _and_ Ben."

"But Ben's okay."

"Ben's gonna be fine."

Dean looked down at the twin white pills in the palm of his hand that Bobby had given him. His eyes traveled the length of his forearms, expecting to see burn marks where the thing had grabbed him. But he was fine. Why was he fine?

He carefully set the glass of water down on the floor and laid the pills down beside it.

"I think I was dead, Bobby."

"Yeah, well. You been dead before."

"No, I'm fucking serious." He looked up at the older man. "I was in the cage. I was with Sam but he…" His mind rebelled against all the conflicting information, trying to get a grip on what had actually happened.

"It was just a dream, son. You were out a good while there."

"No, I really don't think it was a dream."

Bobby didn't say anything. He gave Dean a pat on the knee and pushed himself up from the cross-legged seated position he'd been stuck in too long for an old man. "You can stay on the floor if you like but I do own furniture, idjit. Ben's asleep in the bed. Just asleep," he added for reassurance. "He woke up a while ago."

Dean nodded, looking down at his unscarred arms.

Bobby leaned over and put a hand on Dean's shoulder. "I'm sorry. About Sam. It was a long shot, you know that."

"Yeah," he said brusquely. Dean could feel the steel walls slamming into place, locking everything down.

Everything that was too broken or damaged to snap back together piece or examine for too long in the light of day was efficiently swept back into the dark, untouchable recesses of whatever new-age, bullshit-of the week it was that he could deny even existed.

Bobby understood, Bobby was the grand master of lead box jujitsu. He gave Dean's shoulder a terse squeeze before heading downstairs and leaving Dean to hold his head in his hands until he could manage to put the last of the despair in its place.

* * *

Ben gripped the ball just like Dean had shown him, forefinger over one thick, red seam and the rest curling around it so it fit neatly into his palm.

"That's it," he said, closing his hand over Ben's, around the ball. "You see how tight that feels? Just like that."

Ben nodded. "Can I try it?"

Dean picked up his glove – the new, not-quite-broken-in, adult-sized glove he'd bought for himself, since Ben was now using his old mitt – walked the length of the back yard. Ben carefully adjusted the ball in his hand, and then pitched the ball in a perfect arc, straight into Dean's waiting glove.

Dean held out his arms triumphantly. "Did you see that? I didn't have to move my feet, not an inch! That was beautiful."

Ben beamed. Dean lobbed the ball back, which Ben caught easily.

"Dean, can I tell you something?" Ben asked, throwing another perfect toss.

"Yeah, anything."

"Okay, and—and you won't be weirded out, okay?"

Dean paused in mid-throw, and gave Ben a look. "Well, now I'm going to be. But you might as well tell me anyway."

Ben took a deep breath and walked back toward Dean, closing the gap between them. "I wanted to tell you, you were right."

"Okay…?"

"About your brother. About Sam. You were right. He… he _was_ the bravest."

Dean opened his mouth to say something, but then frowned and closed it again. He really didn't know what to say. Then he looked hard at Ben. They'd never talked about that night at Bobby's. He'd called Lisa with relief in his voice to let her know Ben was okay, and Ben had slept soundly through the night. He hadn't said anything more about Ben's ordeal with the jack, just asked how he was feeling and did he want orange juice with his breakfast because he needed to get his strength back up.

Lost in thought, Dean almost jumped when he felt Ben's small hand slip into his. He looked down, and Ben was looking up at him, smiling with the same slightly sad, regretful smile that Sam had given him.

It broke his heart in so many ways. And not all of them bad.

* * *

_End._


End file.
